BR 

479 



THE OPPORTUNITY 
FOR RELIGION 



HARRY F. WARD 




Qass B K -U ? 

Book .Wa 

Copyright N" 



COPMRIGHT DEPOSff. 



THE OPPORTUNITY 
FOR RELIGION 



I 



( 



THE OPPORTUNITY 
FOR RELIGION 

IN THE 
PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 



BY 

HARRY F. WARD 




NEW YORK 

THE WOMANS PRESS 

1919 



L_ 



.>V3 



COPYRIGHT, 191 9, BY 
HARRY F. WARD 



OCl -9 1919 

©CI.A535218 



"Vi 



'^ \ 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1 7 

II 21 

ni 45 

IV S6 



THE OPPORTUNITY 
FOR RELIGION 

I 

Of the much writing impelled by the Great 
War, that which deals directly with religion 
is a very small proportion. Of this, by far 
the greater part is concerned with the prob- 
lem of personal faith and conduct, or with 
the effect of the war upon religion and the 
churches in the days to come. There is 
another phase of the subject that calls for 
consideration. What opportunity does the 
world crisis offer for religion to lead human- 
ity into a better way of living? The answer 
to that question should point the path of 
duty for the religious individual, and upon 
the answer which the churches make to that 
inquiry their future will most certainly de- 
pend. 



8 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

The war has developed the demand and 
opportunity for the reconstruction of society. 
Practically all the social forces are now massed 
in a mighty struggle to determine in what 
kind of a world and in what manner hu- 
manity shall live for a long time to come. 
Religion is one of these forces. How is it 
mobilized and to what end? Is there any 
spiritual imperative that religion can bring 
to bear upon the present world situation? 
Is it able to translate its ideals into collec- 
tive conduct, to give content to the duties 
it has been teaching? These are the ques- 
tions that demand an answer, for the final 
test of all religions is in the field of social 
action. By what they have to contribute 
to the welfare of humanity, is their ultimate 
worth to be determined. 

Of course when we speak of religion, it is 
organized religion that is meant, and more 
particularly the leaders of organized religion. 
The term "church'' is not adequate for our 
purpose. It needs to be remembered that 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 9 

organized religion to-day comprehends not 
only the churches, but also a number of 
other agencies for religious instruction and 
propaganda. It needs still more to be re- 
membered that in the modern world there 
are large religious forces, actual and poten- 
tial, without the bounds of all organized 
religion, which can be mobilized and brought 
to bear upon the present situation by an ad- 
equate religious statesmanship. Such forces 
are particularly to be found in the world of 
labor. 

The mind of the race is beginning to see 
what the heart of mankind has long felt — 
that there is no hope for humanity save in 
the working out of world-democracy, and 
world-democracy will never be developed 
unless a common religious dynamic operates 
among all peoples, of which humanity shall 
become increasingly conscious and to which 
it shall increasingly yield its allegiance. 

A unique element in the present situation 
is the extent to which mankind is conscious 



lo OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

that an hour of destiny has arrived. The 
fateful hours of the past were not known to 
many of those who Hved in them. They 
were revealed afterward to the historian. 
But the people of to-day have eaten plenti- 
fully of the tree of knowledge. The laws of 
the physical universe, the history of the 
human race, the causes of social progress and 
decay — these are all an open book before this 
generation. The control of nature and of 
human society is now in the hands of the 
common people to an extent unimagined 
by even the leaders of the past. Not blindly 
as did men of other days do we take the 
road. We are not walking in darkness. 

The knowledge of the possibilities that 
hang upon the outcome of this day is not 
merely the property of the wise men of the 
universities. All over the earth the plain 
people are taking the destiny of the race into 
their hands. This issue will not be decided 
by a few leaders gambling with the lives 
of the masses. The ^'silent masses^' are 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION ii 

everywhere becoming articulate. The voice 
of the weaker and more backward peoples is 
heard. Their interests are now to be con- 
sidered. The Orient takes its place be- 
side the Occident. Japan and China enter 
into the family of nations with power. The 
common people of India get unto themselves 
self-government. Never before have so many 
peoples been consciously joined together in 
the choosing of their future. It is indeed 
mankind deciding its destiny. 

Yet it is still true that in every lan^d large 
numbers of people are not conscious of the 
issue of the hour and many more are only 
partially enlightened concerning it. These 
are often the so-called "better class ^' of 
people. In this fact lies one opportunity 
and duty for religion. As it makes a man 
conscious of his moral choices, so must it 
make the nations conscious of the results 
that will follow their decision. Its educa- 
tional and preaching processes can be used 
to that end. There is a penalty in store for 



12 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

the priests who let the people perish for lack 
of knowledge, who suffer them to be led as 
sheep to the slaughter, by their own igno- 
rance and prejudice, the wiles of selfish lead- 
ers, and the influence of a designing press. 
The fact that the people have the power to 
decide is no guarantee that they will make 
a deliberate decision. Professor George A, 
Coe has pointed out the difference between 
the action of a crowd and of a deliberative 
group. It is the duty of religion to develop 
the people into a deliberative group, that 
they may decide their own fate and the fate 
of the future intelligently, with a full knowl- 
edge of the whole situation and of all the issues 
involved in it. 

The people must be brought to see life 
whole. At present they see it only partially, 
and usually from the standpoint of self- 
interest. One of the tragedies of the hour is 
that those who seek human welfare honestly, 
see only one side of it. This blinding of 
vision by self-interest has determined the 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 13 

policy of religious and labor groups which 
were pledged to seek the good of all humanity. 
How much has their action been determined 
or will it be determined by some secret, half- 
recognized hope of advantage to themselves? 
How much is their point of view determined 
by the environment and training of their 
class interests? Religion should help men to 
rise above such narrow ground. It should 
give them knowledge of the whole situation 
and lead them to consider the interest of all. 
If the world is left in this hour of emergency 
to depend upon self-interest, it will be left to 
the mercy of an unreliable guide, for self- 
interest generally leads only to the satisfac- 
tion of immediate needs and desires. It is 
always difficult to see the larger and longer 
self-interest of following the ideal, to perceive 
the good that comes to one's self by seeking 
the good of others. Yet to get men and 
nations to seek this larger self-interest, to 
act for the good of the whole, is one of the 
special functions of religion. 



14 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

If mankind is to make an intelligent choice 
in this situation, it must not only know the 
consequences of its decision, it must not only- 
have in mind the interests of the whole of 
humanity; it must also see clearly the nature 
of the choice that is before it. It must know 
just what it is choosing. The question 
now before the house of humanity is the 
prevention of war. But behind war is the 
philosophy of the state that needs mili- 
tarism for its support, and behind that is the 
social system out of which war emerges. 

The ultimate fact behind the recent world- 
conflict is that the work life of the world is 
organized around the spirit of greed and 
conquest. No stable and enduring peace 
can be created without reckoning with this 
fact. If mankind would save itself from 
wasting death by a continued series of con- 
flicts, it must find a new manner of living in 
times of peace. It is a choice not simply 
between two principles of government, but 
between two philosophies of life. The world 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 15 

must choose between life organized around 
the principle of strife, and life organized 
around the principle of good will. The way- 
out of war and its horrors is not by paper 
pacts merely, but by the creation of a new 
world. It is not merely a question of new 
political constitutions or of new forms of 
social organization; it is also a question of 
motives and organizing principle. Shall civ- 
ilization seek property or life, the creation 
of goods or the development of humanity? 
Shall its organizing principle be strife or 
love, service or exploitation, the right of 
the strong, as individuals and a class, to 
rule, or the duty of the strong to serve ? 

The choice now is between the religion of 
war and the religion of peace. The religion 
of war is glorious. It calls out all the ener- 
gies of life in supreme moments of conflict. 
But it hurts and destroys. It is the religion 
of aristocracy. It makes supermen, who live 
in palaces. And they have many servants 
all over the earth, who do not live in palaces. 



i6 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

The religion of love is more glorious. It also 
requires courage, endurance, sacrifice. It 
calls out all the energies of life in a continu- 
ous conflict with nature and with evil, in a 
sustained career of service. It does not hurt 
or destroy, it heals and renews. It is the 
religion of democracy. It makes not lords 
but freemen, who choose to be "suffering 
servants'^ and who live not in palaces, but in 
carpenter shops. It develops a society of 
producers cooperating together in the pro- 
duction of economic goods and using them 
for the development of all the higher values 
of life, not for a chosen few, but for all the 
people. 

The tendency of our times is to be content 
with the mere mechanics of change. Is re- 
ligion at fault? Then let us see what is the 
matter with the churches. Let us get feder- 
ation instead of competition; but that fed- 
eration, having the same inadequate forms 
of religious expression, brings yet no new 
note into the spiritual life. In a day when 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 17 

the present world-order is proving inade- 
quate for both the practical needs and the 
spiritual desires of man, those of us who are 
Christians may well remember that weighty 
word of Chesterton that "'the characteristic 
demand of Christianity is for a new world/' 
To make that new world, religion must now 
challenge mankind. But if there is to be a 
new world, then religion, too, must have new 
forms of expression. 

The need for a new world is a challenge to 
the will of man, and religion always makes its 
central appeal to the will. Religious workers 
in our training camps remarked upon the 
fact that the outstanding characteristic of 
the majority of the men was the lack of any 
definite or conscious purpose. They were 
living, and apparently were going to fight, 
without any aim. This fact is a revelation 
of the nature of our industrial civilization. 
Its largest conscious motive being the mere 
production of goods, it leaves the mass of 
mankind with nothing to do and no motive 



1 8 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

in life but to make or earn money and then 
to spend it. It is the business of rehgion 
to give Hfe an aim, to fasten its eyes upon a 
high goal, and then to develop the will to 
hold the lagging feet in the path that leads 
thither. In a time when the nations who sit 
in darkness are seeking for light, when the 
peoples of the earth are treading together the 
wine-press of sorrow and suffering and cannot 
see the way out, it should be the distinction 
of religion to call the world to a great pur- 
pose. 

One of the perils of the hour is that religious 
leaders should uncritically assume that such 
democratic gains have already come out of 
the war, that it will inevitably become a 
great instrument of social progress. But 
whatever gains have been achieved in the 
national control of industry, and in the 
increase of collective action, can easily be 
used for the strengthening of militarism. Or 
they can become the tools of a people seek- 
ing nothing higher than the increase of 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 19 

material goods. The social gains of war 
time have yet to become the possessions of 
all the people, to be dedicated to the spirituaj 
advancement of the whole race. 

To make the choice that will lift humanity 
to new heights of living requires a great effort 
of the collective will. Before a new world 
can be organized mankind must passionately 
long for it, must definitely set its will to 
achieve it. Our later philosophers have 
pointed out that mankind, having the in- 
tellectual and mechanical tools of progress, 
yet lacks the desire and the will to create a 
better way of living. It is the business of 
religion in this day of opportunity to develop 
and guide the creative will of mankind to 
the shaping of a better form of society. 

One of the deepest spiritual facts of the 
present hour is the growing apprehension of a 
new world-order. It seems almost within 
our grasp, yet somehow eludes our eager out- 
stretched hands. It is the hour of travail 
for mankind. A new world is struggling to 



20 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

come forth and the old order is holding it 
back. It is an hour of torturing uncer- 
tainty, but the hour of a great hope. Every- 
where is the portent of new things, the 
universal expectation of a great emancipa- 
tion that has ever marked the beginning of a 
religious era. 

The spirit of creation broods again, this 
time above the chaos of human relations. 
In the social unrest of the last generation 
and now in this world-conflict, there is more 
than a human struggle. The eternal Power 
is striving in and with us to bring order out 
of the anarchy of our political and economic 
affairs, to accomplish the divine dream of 
unity in this most difficult of all spheres. 
In this great hour can religion bring together 
the will of man and the will of God in a 
common creative effort? Is it possible to ex- 
perience a collective incarnation.^ 



II 

It is significant that almost every one who 
writes about rehgion in the present situa- 
tion laments sectarian divisions and de- 
sires more unity. This is a reflection of the 
world-effort toward a larger degree of united 
action. It is of a piece with the movement 
toward political federation and international 
control. The movement for religious co- 
operation contains the possibilities of a much 
larger service from religion to humanity, but 
it must face the question of the purpose and 
end for which the churches are to be feder- 
ated or unified, it must recognize that present 
forms of religious expression have failed to 
satisfy so many of those who seek truth at 
one end of society and of those who struggle 
for social justice at the other end. Religion 
must reckon with the fact that the awakening 
working class in all the industrial nations has 



22 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

weighed our present civilization in the bal- 
ance and found it wanting. They have 
condemned it not simply because it has failed 
to provide them with the necessary goods for 
the development of life, after they have 
labored to the utmost of their energy, but 
because it has thwarted their sense of justice, 
and denied them the satisfaction of their 
longing after brotherhood. They have con- 
demned it then on moral and spiritual 
grounds. They are bent upon the making 
of a new civilization. They will have no 
use for any kind of religion which does not 
lead them in that endeavor, which condones 
or sustains the present order. If religion 
is to have any leadership in the future, if it is 
to meet the heart-hunger of the masses, it 
must show them a new manner of life. 

In such an undertaking, the search for 
unity in religion must go farther afield. 
From the achievement of religious coopera- 
tion, it must proceed to develop cooperative 
religion. It must discover the common ele- 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 23 

ment in all religions. It must emphasize 
those universal aspirations and ideals which 
will stimulate the joint undertaking for a 
better world. It must provide the atmos- 
phere in which world-democracy can grow. 
There is need not only to mass the common 
spiritual resources of mankind but also to 
develop them to their maximum capacity. 
As the fierce test of war has demanded all the 
noble qualities of man, so the task of recon- 
struction, the necessity of creating a new 
world-order, will require all the spiritual 
capacities of the race. To raise such ca- 
pacities to their highest possible power at this 
present moment is the contribution to the 
common undertaking demanded of religion. 
The essential elements of religion were 
stated long ago in classic form: ^'Now 
abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and 
the greatest of these is love.'' What de- 
mands, then, does the adventure that now 
lies before mankind make upon these, its 
fundamental spiritual resources? 



24 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

Mankind lives by faith. No step forward 
in life, individual or collective, is ever taken 
without it. The will to believe is also the 
will to create. The faith that cries, "It 
shall be done,'" actually removes mountains, 
achieves the impossible. Such faith is the 
indispensable condition of progress, because 
it leads men to attempt the unprecedented, 
to try the thing for which there is no proof, 
to dare the thing which never has been 
done. Donald Hankey found in the trenches 
that faith was "betting one's life that there is 
a God.'' This is exactly the quality that 
mankind needs for the task that lies before it. 
To achieve their need and their desire, the 
nations must risk their lives on the chance 
that the universe is with them, that the 
eternal order of things is justice and love. 
It is both the necessity and the desire of 
mankind to organize a world without arms, 
to organize industry within and between na- 
tions for the service of human need and not 
for the making of gain for the people of 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 25 

power; and such a world has never yet ex- 
isted. Already concrete plans to this end 
have been drafted. They are being soberly 
considered by responsible authorities, but it 
is something which never has been done and 
it will not be done without a great wave of 
faith throughout the world. The beginnings 
of a new order of life for mankind depend 
absolutely upon the generation of sufficient 
faith to make it possible to risk the first 
steps. It is always the peculiar duty of re- 
ligion to develop the faith by which the 
work of the world gets accomplished. In 
such an emergency, when new reserves of 
faith are required, what a challenge comes 
then to religion ! 

Yet the war has struck heavy blows at 
faith. Facing the hard facts of conflict, 
the bitter evidence of the ambitions, the 
jealousies, the self-will of classes and nations, 
how many among us have less faith in hu- 
manity than before the war.? How many 
of those who, when the war broke out, said 



26 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

confidently, "This will be the last/' are 
now saying, "Wars must always be/' are 
urging their nation to prepare for the con- 
tinuance of war, are assuming the present 
order of things as eternal, are repeating the 
vapid fallacy that "human nature cannot 
be changed,'' are evidencing a belief in the 
total depravity of mankind which they would 
indignantly reject if it were asserted con- 
cerning their own individual natures? How 
many have less confidence that the nations 
of the earth are amenable to reason and 
good will than they had before they en- 
countered the hard reality of war? Yet 
the construction of an international and 
supra-national organization that shall order 
a new way of living for the world must be 
based upon mutual trust and good will. It 
requires more faith between men than there 
was before the war began and very much 
more than now exists. 

This does not mean faith in a fool's para- 
dise or faith in a kind of humanity which 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 27 

does not yet exist, but to retain sanity and 
clarity of judgment there must be faith in 
the ultimate possibilities of mankind, in 
the potential goodness even of enemies. It 
is because we have not faith in each other and 
therefore have not faith in God that we con- 
tinue armaments and competitive industrial- 
ism. 

When religion addresses itself to the task 
of generating a faith adequate for the recon- 
struction of the world, it will face a wide- 
spread indifference. One of the inevitable 
consequences of the tremendous drain upon 
the energies of life by the recent struggle is 
the exhaustion of idealism. The forces of 
religion will have all that they can do to 
prevent a dull and deadly period of material- 
ism, such as followed our own Civil War. 
The only hope is that they should now pro- 
ceed to develop the unrealized spiritual re- 
serves of those who are not exhausted by the 
actual conflict. 

Many of the men who went to the front 



28 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

found their better selves. They developed 
unrealized capacities. They know now what 
they can do in the face of death and the 
impossible. How shall the men who stayed 
at home be made to believe also in their 
better selves and in the possibilities of hu- 
manity? As the men in the trenches have 
come to feel the pull of comradeship and to 
know the crowd urge that calls faint-hearted 
men over the top to die gloriously, so must 
the people who have never felt the terrible 
uplifting enthusiasm of battle be led to act 
together upon their faith, until they also 
have discovered the powers that are within 
them and can apply to the making of a new 
world the same unrealized resources of ideal- 
ism which have developed the heroism of 
the battle-field. Theirs it is to live to create 
the new world for which other men have 
died. For this more sustained endeavor they 
will need even a greater faith than that 
which inspires men deliberately to hazard 
their lives for an ideal. 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 29 

Jesus lived and died by a faith in the 
ultimate supremacy of spiritual forces. He 
risked his life on the hypothesis that they 
would prove stronger than all the mailed 
might of the Roman Empire. In what does 
the majority of mankind trust to-day? In 
the power of the spiritual forces of love and 
service or in the power of hard facts, of 
money and munitions? It is a question of 
relative values. In which will we trust as 
the controlling forces in the organization of 
life? 

Religion is challenged to make mankind 
to-day believe in itself and in God as it never 
has done before in its history. Otherwise its 
faltering feet may turn down the path that 
leads to destruction. If religion folds its 
hands and preaches the counsel of despair, if 
it does but echo the voice of the market- 
place, crying that the ideals of humanity and 
the laws of God are both unrealizable, then 
indeed has the day of death begun to dawn 
for the peoples of the earth. The supreme 



30 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

tragedy of a community or a nation is when 
its religion is merely the defender of the 
existing order, when the only God that the 
people are called to worship is the "God of 
things as they are/' Life moves forward 
only when religion proclaims the things that 
ought to be and challenges the will of the 
people to make them be. If the collective 
will of mankind is now to be directed to the 
making of a new world, all the teaching 
agencies of religion must continually pro- 
claim the vision of "a new heaven and a new 
earth/' If now this should be made con- 
crete in terms of disarmament and world- 
wide economic cooperation, the nations would 
soon come to believe these measures possible. 
If the people can be made to see, they will 
rise and follow the vision. 

To make faith effective there must be 
added to it — hope. Hope brings faith down 
to the ground. It possesses insistency and 
immediacy. It looks to the near accomplish- 
ment of that which faith leads the will to 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 31 

attempt. It believes not simply that the 
Kingdom of God will come sometime and 
somewhere, but that it will come even upon 
the earth as in heaven and that its beginning 
will be now. It believes that a different 
social order is not only possible, but is within 
reach. 

Loss of hope is one of the inevitable ac- 
companiments of war, for hope belongs with 
the vitality of youth, and the world is now 
war-weary and old. An American student 
at the French front commented upon the fact 
that the French soldiers are prematurely 
aged. ''They have lost their youth,'' he 
says; *'they sit like old men and talk con- 
stantly of the good days they have seen in 
the past.'' The world faces the task of 
reconstruction with much of its youth gone 
and with much that remains prematurely 
exhausted and aged. It is a less hopeful 
world; will it be a less moral, a less idealistic 
world.? If our civilization is not to become 
prematurely impotent, the springs of youth 



32 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

and hope must be restored. To those of 
middle age and past, Bertrand Russell brings 
a great word concerning *^the young men 
who have died through our fear of life. . . . 
Their very ghosts have more life than we. 
. . . Out of their ghosts must come life and it 
is we whom they must vivify/' The genera- 
tion now coming to manhood must be given 
more than the natural hope of youth. "It 
is necessary to create a new hope; . . . only 
a supreme fire of thought and spirit can 
save future generations from the death that 
has befallen the generation we knew and 
loved.'' ^ 

One of the outstanding qualities of the 
Christian religion is its perennial youthful- 
ness and hope. It refuses to despair before 
the entrenchments of evil, no matter how 
strong they be. It shouts its triumph in 
the very face of death. Christianity has a 
social gospel, and the social gospel refuses to 
acquiesce in the triumph of evil upon the 
1 Russell, "Why Men Fight.'' 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 33 

earth; it believes that humanity can and will 
go on to perfection; it insists that the ideals 
and principles of Jesus which express and 
identify the ideals and aspirations of hu- 
manity and the eternal purposes of God shall 
yet be embodied in human living. 

One of the continually recurring tenden- 
cies of religion is to transfer its faith to the 
hereafter. When evil has seized control of 
this present world, then the people of re- 
ligion look for some future deliverance. So 
Israel, when great heathen powers were grind- 
ing her between their iron jaws, transferred 
her religious hope from the present to the 
hereafter. So the early Christians, sup- 
pressed by imperial Rome, looked away from 
the pomp and power of the scarlet woman 
upon the seven hills to the Christ coming 
from the clouds in glory to set up his reign 
upon the earth. The same tendency appears 
in this present time. In the presence of sin 
so vast, calamity so overwhelming, as this 
world-war, multitudes of Christians are tak- 



34 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

ing refuge in the theory that the world is evil 
and must therefore either be destroyed or 
purged by the second coming of Christ to 
reign in power. As a demonstration of faith 
in the presence of world-catastrophe this is 
magnificent, but it is not religion. It aban- 
dons hope for the redemption of an evil 
world at the very time when the largest 
steps in the process of world-redemption are 
within reach, if only the faith and will of 
man can be joined with the eternal purpose 
and power of God. 

The duty of religion in a time like this is 
plainly to increase the hope of mankind. 
This it can do by pointing out that the 
present situation is neither fate nor destiny, 
but the consequence^ of the ignorance and 
selfishness of man, the result of the teaching 
of false ideals and the organization of life on 
a wrong basis. Religious teaching can point 
out the responsibility for this and all other 
wars by analyzing their causes. It can en- 
courage humanity to hope for the abolition 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 35 

of war by showing the degree of control over 
the spirit of aggression which man has ac- 
quired through long years of social advance. 
It can point out how in former times in- 
dividual men continually faced each other in 
arms and suspicion as the nations now do. 
It can show the progress that the nations 
have made in arranging peaceful methods 
to settle their disputes. It can show the 
development that has been made since the 
war began in the joint control of the eco- 
nomic causes of war. It can point out the 
spread of the desire and determination to 
make an end of this common enemy of the 
race. Lest mankind should now stop short 
of this desired goal and even of its possible 
achievement in the present situation, there 
must be a concerted effort to strengthen the 
hope of men. 

There remains ^'the greatest of these — 
love.'" Without love, faith may not realize 
its vision nor hope its purpose. It is not 
only ''the greatest thing in the world/' but 



36 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

the greatest need of mankind in this crisis. 
Jesus revealed a God of love. A new com- 
mandment He gave men, that they should 
love one another. This was to be the sign of 
God-likeness and in the doing of it they 
were to find fellowship with God. He pro- 
claimed love as the welding force of the com- 
munity life that was to develop around his 
teaching. He taught love as the organizing 
principle of human fellowship. His disci- 
ples were to concrete it in service to one 
another, and this was to distinguish them 
from the Gentiles. His followers have long 
proclaimed love as the greatest personal vir- 
tue. They have striven to be made per- 
fect in love. It is now time for them to 
proclaim and develop love as the only social 
force sufficient to bind humanity together in 
the new world-life that its faith and hope 
are seeking. In this effort they will be 
joined by a great company, for good will is 
the talisman of all modern idealists — the 
force in which they put their trust. 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 37 

The innate capacity of mankind to love 
and the extent to which the passion for 
brotherhood has gripped the heart of man- 
kind have been amply shown by the war. 
It was a hard war to make. So far had 
good will between the nations developed that 
among the common people the will to hate 
and to kill had to be cultivated by invented 
acts of aggression, by exhortations of preach- 
ers and would-be poets, by the sight and 
recital of atrocities and by training in feroc- 
ity. This manifest reluctance to make war 
is not because the battle spirit of man has 
atrophied in an industrial civilization. The 
unsurpassed endurance and heroism in the 
trenches of men who until recently had never 
thought of war as a possibility is evidence 
enough to support the contention of those 
who maintain that the struggle of civiliza- 
tion to subdue both nature and the barbaric 
instincts of mankind will retain all the vir- 
tues that lie in the battle spirit of the race. 
It is difficult to make war to-day because the 



38 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

ancient dream of shepherds and the Holy 
Grail of the wise — good will among men 
— has become a modern social fact of the 
first importance. Alongside the latent bar- 
barism brought to the surface by this war must 
be chronicled a desperate effort to maintain 
good will, to hold on to the spiritual gains 
acquired in the slow ascent of man. 

Yet the common stock of good will that 
is the great social inheritance of mankind 
has been sadly impaired by the recent strug- 
gle. The natural recuperation of the spirit 
of good will among the fighting men after 
the battle is over is one of the marvels of 
history, even as the recuperative power of 
the physical organism when wounded is one 
of the marvels of nature. But something 
more will be needed for reconstruction days 
than natural good will. There will be needed 
greater cooperative capacity, which is more 
than the ability to fraternize or to worship 
together. These forms of association pro- 
vide no guarantee against the repetition of 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 39 

the present horror, for men have joined in 
these and still have been dragged unwill- 
ingly into war to kill each other. What 
is needed to make good will effective in 
social cooperation is a definite discipline, 
both of teaching and of practice, and this it 
is the function of religion to develop. 

Effective good will is the development of 
the social process, as well as of the procla- 
mation of an ideal. It can therefore no 
more be conjured out of the air for the great 
task of reconstruction than can the metal 
that has been shot into the soil of Europe 
or the lumber that has been splintered in the 
trenches. There is a long-continuing proc- 
ess of creation behind the one as the other. 
To repair the breaches the war has made in 
international good will is a task as difficult 
as knitting together the broken economic 
life of the world. Indeed, the two under- 
takings are interdependent. In this task 
of reconstruction it is time to add to our 
regimen of conservation of economic ma- 



40 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

terials a similar effort to conserve our spiritual 
resources. Unless the world can do this, it 
will find itself spiritually bankrupt, in its 
day of greatest opportunity. 

The loftiest expression of good will is the 
command of Jesus, "Love your enemies/' 
This teaching is the climax of the endeavor of 
mankind to establish brotherhood, the cul- 
mination of a slow development of ethical 
standards. Only through long periods of 
social advance did men learn that distrust 
and hostility toward the stranger without the 
gates was not essential to loyalty to their 
own group. Slowly did they discover that 
the wider the extension of mutual aid, the 
greater its benefits to all concerned. Finally 
they sought after world-wide brotherhood. 
But this goal cannot be attained without the 
ability to deal in good will with those who 
are aggressors against the common weal. 

This cannot be done by assuming or re- 
fusing to assume certain personal relation- 
ships to other persons. It is a question of 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 41 

the relations between nations and groups of 
nations. To find out how to love one's 
enemies becomes a matter of discovering a 
policy for the nation that shall really embody 
good will as an active principle and leave no 
abiding enmity. 

To develop good will between enemies, to 
eliminate the bitterness and hate of war time, 
the essential thing is a common purpose, a 
policy and program of common action. Re- 
ligion approaches this undertaking with the 
advantage that it already has under its 
direction people who had a common purpose 
before the war. One of the great spiritual 
tragedies of the war was that it caused the 
''brothers'' and "comrades" of a chosen 
fellowship to seek each others' lives. They 
had and still have a common religious pur- 
pose, but another interest separated them 
from their common purpose and from each 
other. It was the need and demand of the 
state that did this. If this need and de- 
mand does not coincide with the larger good 



42 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

of all mankind, to seek which religion has been 
calling into a common fellowship the citizens 
of different states, then the state has achieved 
a stronger moral sovereignty than religion, 
and religion stands defeated. In such case, 
the first task of religion is to recall its own 
adherents to the common fellowship by re- 
kindling their loyalty to their common pur- 
pose. If it cannot do this, how can it ever 
teach the rest of the world to "love your 
enemies''? 

Ought not adherents of the same religion 
in hostile countries to inquire whether they 
have a common interest which is higher than 
the interest that separates them.^ If their 
religion has taught them that God must be 
expressed in a world-wide life of brother- 
hood, must they not continually inquire how 
much their national aim is making for this 
larger good, and thus find out how national 
pride and self-interest are obstructing the 
vision of God? If these religious groups 
would thus seek together after their com- 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 43 

mon purpose, would they not find a com- 
mon way for their nations out of their an- 
tagonism, and thereby develop a common 
force for reconstruction? The hope of ad- 
vance for mankind depends upon whether 
the forces of good will possess the capacity to 
organize their common passion for brother- 
hood, to develop into conscious fraternity 
the "mutual aid'' which has been the prin- 
cipal factor in social evolution, and to direct 
it to the chosen end of a world-wide, coopera- 
tive life. 

This means that religion must call its 
adherents in every land to a passionate 
loyalty to its ideal of world-wide brother- 
hood. In war time the state achieves na- 
tional solidarity and safety by calling in- 
dividuals to a sacrificial loyalty. The achieve- 
ment of the solidarity of mankind requires 
the continuous expression of loyalty, to the 
point of sacrifice. Herein is accomplished 
the supreme religious expression of the indi- 
vidual. To secure this abundant life of sacri- 



44 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

ficial loyalty to the greatest possible cause 
is the compelling duty of religion. It must 
ever call the peoples of the earth to follow 
at any cost the way of love, which is the 
only way of life. 



Ill 

Religion has also a duty other than 
developing the spiritual resources of mankind. 
It must lead them to expression. It is faced 
with the necessity of deciding what policies 
of national and international action will 
realize its faith, embody its hope, and give 
concrete expression to its love. In this hour 
of choice, when humanity stands in the 
valley of decision, religion must express 
itself concerning the next steps for human- 
ity to take in the direction of the ideals which 
it has been proclaiming. It must teach 
mankind not simply duty, but the content 
of duty. 

The approach to this concrete expression 
of religion is always twofold. It involves 
both measures of repression against evil 
and constructive measures to replace evil 



46 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

with good. If a community is to get rid 
of the curse of alcohol, there must be both 
the elimination of the organized saloon and 
the development of constructive social recrea- 
tion to take the place of the fellowship that 
has ever gathered around the drink habit. 
So will it be in the world situation. The 
making of a better world involves the destruc- 
tion of giant evils. In order to transfer the 
heroic religious qualities of war time to the 
slower and quieter task of social reconstruc- 
tion, that task must be shown to involve 
conflict. It must involve the supreme thrill 
of the shock of battle. An enemy makes 
men heroes. The necessity of resisting idola- 
try, slavery, the liquor traffic, has glorified 
very ordinary people. One of the duties 
of religion is to identify and reveal the forces 
of evil, in order that mankind may know 
against what its toil and heroism should really 
be directed. 

The spirit of antagonism has a social 
value. Animated by self-interest, it drives 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 47 

men against each other. Concentrated upon 
a common foe, it binds men together. In 
the presence of a common enemy, there 
develops at once loyalty to a common cause 
and capacity for common action. The world 
of labor is continually divided by inter- 
necine conflicts. There are jurisdictional 
strikes between different trade unions. There 
is perpetual conflict between the socialist, 
the trade-unionist, and the syndicalist. Let 
some dull-minded and overgreedy capitalist, 
however, launch an assault upon one of the 
fundamental rights and liberties of labor and 
at once they are united against the common 
menace. How many years of development 
in the ordinary constructive processes of 
peace would it have taken to get the Allied 
Powers to cooperate, as they did under 
the pressure of a common foe, in the joint 
administration of their economic life ? Could 
the nations but come to see that poverty 
is their common menace, and that greed is 
destroying them all alike, they would extend 



48 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

this joint administration until the whole 
world would be bound together in a common 
cooperative life. 

The two great forces that mankind to- 
gether must conquer are nature and evil. 
The one, man must conquer for the means of 
subsistence, the other for his spiritual de- 
velopment. In the present circumstance, the 
evil that is in the world and in man has been 
dramatically personified in war. War is the 
common enemy. 

The physical horrors of war are the lesser 
of its evils. It is the effect of war upon the 
souls of men and the soul of the world-or- 
ganism that must be faced. In considering 
what war does to personality, it must be 
remembered that personality is a social fact. 
The most serious consequence of war is its 
assault upon the growing social personality 
of mankind, in which alone our individual 
personalities come to their full realization. 
In the present state of the world-life, war is 
indeed fratricidal — not simply because it 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 49 

requires brothers and comrades, pledged to a 
common cause, to kill each other, but because 
it turns one part of the social body against 
the other part. It is the dread disease, the 
terrible madness that causes mankind to 
devour its own vitals. 

There are two groups of proposals before 
the common parliament of humanity, look- 
ing toward the abolition of war and the estab- 
lishment of world-order. One comes from 
intellectuals, who are now managing the af- 
fairs of the world. They are planning a 
League of Nations to adjust the disputes of 
the world and thus to develop a stable and 
enduring peace. Some of them make dis- 
armament an essential feature of the plan, 
but more do not. The other proposal comes 
from the men who labor with their hands. 
They are demanding that the nations shall be 
disarmed and that the economic life of the 
world shall be reorganized on the basis of 
cooperation Instead of competition, that it 
shall be developed in friendship and mutual 



so OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

aid Instead of in strife and war. In these 
proposals there are two great central facts 
around which the mind and purpose of 
humanity needs now to concentrate: dis- 
armament and economic cooperation. The 
first steps in these two processes must now 
be taken if the world is to learn to walk in a 
new way of life. It is for or against these 
things that the nations must now choose. 

Religion has long proclaimed a day when 
the sword should be beaten into the plow- 
share and the spear into the pruning-hook. 
That day is within reach. Weary of slaughter, 
fearful of its disastrous economic conse- 
quences, conscious of the burden of arma- 
ments upon the productive energies of 
humanity, the peoples of the earth are look- 
ing for a way of disarmament. When the 
first universal measure is taken to that end, 
the death warrant of war is sealed. War is 
collective crime, and armaments are its tools 
and occasion. They do not make war, but 
they provide the means for war and they 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 51 

make it inevitable. An ex-premier of Great 
Britain feels it necessary to appeal to us not 
to repeat the fallacy they have at such cost 
disproved — that armaments make for peace. 
The English Council of Workers and Sol- 
diers says: ^^If the nations are not loaded, 
they cannot explode.'^ Wilfully to continue 
armaments is to continue the occasion and 
incitement to international crime. ' It is as 
if the drunkard had power to abolish the 
saloon and willed to continue it. Yet there 
are those who are now working for the con- 
tinuance of armaments; some from the mo- 
tive of profit, others from fear, others from 
a limited and misguided patriotism. As- 
suming the permanence of war, they are 
doing their best to make its continuance 
inevitable by working for policies which 
will increase the distrust and suspicion of 
mankind. At a time when faith needs to be 
aroused for the great adventure of a warless 
world they are spreading the deadly narcotic 
of disbelief. In a day when it is possible for 



52 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

mankind to throw off its back the burden of 
miUtarism they are transmitting paralysis of 
the will. In this day of supreme oppor- 
tunity they are revealing themselves as 
traitors to the commonwealth of man. 

If the world does not get disarmament, 
the sacrifices of this conflict will have been 
in vain. Men said the Napoleonic wars 
were to be the last of war. It was an idle 
dream. It always will be until the will and 
purpose of mankind is united to achieve 
disarmament. This is now a possible ac- 
coniplishment. Unless it be done, mankind 
will be enslaved to the economic burden of 
this war. Neither the forces of labor, of 
intellect, nor of religion can do their full 
work for the world if they must carry this 
handicap in the future. President Wilson 
has made a measure of disarmament one of 
his war aims. In timid, hesitating fashion 
some of the statesmen of Europe have par- 
tially echoed his words. ^'We hope,'' says 
one, "that disarmament will be included in 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 53 

the terms of peace/' And while they hope 
they fear. Just before his death, at the 
front, viewing the possibility that the war 
may be settled on the basis of trade, leaving 
economic competition between the nations, 
Professor T. F. Kettle wrote: ''It will be a 
victory tainted with ambiguous and selfish 
ends. History will write of us that we began 
nobly but that our purpose corrupted. The 
great war for freedom will not indeed have 
been waged in vain, that is already decided, 
but it will but half have kept its promises. 
Blood and iron will have been once more 
established as the veritable masters of men 
and nothing will open before the world but 
a vista of new wars.'' ^ The one sure pre- 
vention of this disaster is to secure disarma- 
ment. Has the United States, the youthful 
nation, the faith, the courage, the initiative 
to lead the old world in this enterprise? 
What leadership has its religion to offer in 
this emergency? 

1 Kettle, "The Ways of War.^' 



54 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

To achieve disarmament is a constructive 
task. It demands new methods of poUtical 
organization, new forms of deahng with 
international disorder. It is the task of 
statesmanship to work out the measures, it 
is the duty of rehgion to demand that the 
process shall now be commenced. It is the 
first general measure around which the inter- 
national forces of religion can rally as the 
common shepherds of humanity. If all re- 
ligious teaching the world over should con- 
stantly expound the necessity and the possi- 
bility of universal disarmament, if from 
every pulpit, in every Sunday-school, in 
every religious paper, this demand should be 
persistently reiterated, would not the world- 
will presently be aroused and made intelli- 
gent to achieve this great step in human 
progress? Disarmament is more than a me- 
chanical measure. It leaves untouched the 
economic causes of war, the deep-rooted 
battle instinct which has to be given ex- 
pression, but it clears the way for these under- 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 55 

takings. It removes the incubus of fear and 
suspicion which makes love and cooperation 
impossible. It is the expression of a great 
spiritual purpose. It is the beginning of a 
new way of life. That step taken, the 
world would not long consent to continue its 
economic life on the basis of war; its impetus 
would send mankind on up to new heights 
of living. The removal of fear will lead to the 
extension of international relationships in 
every field, to the removal of all barriers 
opposing the free interchange of both eco- 
nomic goods and intellectual and spiritual 
gains, to the gradual cooperative control of 
all energies and resources for the fullest 
possible development of the whole of man- 
kind. The idealism that has gone Into a 
conflict of destruction will be turned into a 
competitive struggle of good will and service 
for the common good of humanity. Un- 
known capacities of production and coopera- 
tion, undreamed intellectual powers and spirit- 
ual resources, will be released. 



IV 

When religion attempts the abolition of 
war, it will find that it must get back of the 
battle-field. War is a great school-master, 
and while religion has been busy dealing with 
things of the past, the facts of the present 
have been educating mankind. Many of 
the men who have seen reality in the trenches 
have gone back of the physical conflict to 
the organization of the spirit of the war in 
the daily life of man. They have come to 
know that we have a social system organized 
on the principle of conflict, within which 
the seeds of this death have been developing. 
They have come to see that what they en- 
dured in the trenches they have long suffered 
on the battle-fields of industry in times of 
peace — privation and pain, wounds and 
death. Now they are beginning to dis- 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 57 

cover the cause of their suffering and to seek 
its removal. While the statesmen are talk- 
ing of arbitration to settle disputes and a 
League of Nations to Enforce Peace, the 
working people are talking about the removal 
of the economic causes of war. In the blaze 
of a world conflagration they have come to 
see that back of war is the great fact that the 
everyday productive business of life is or- 
ganized on the basis of strife; that it is a con- 
stant struggle between individuals, between 
groups, between nations, each seeking the 
rewards of victory in industrial plunder, in 
profit and education and luxury. 

If religion is to lead the common assault of 
humanity against war, it must first under- 
stand the nature of war. Long ago Adam 
Smith, the great English economist, taught 
that war is largely due to the crimes of trad- 
ers. A general of the United States Army 
said to a gathering of financiers, "You make 
the wars; we soldiers only end them.'' A 
recognized English authority on the Balkan 



58 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

situation insists that either of the two recent 
Balkan wars could have been prevented if 
the French bankers had been forbidden to 
finance the combatants ! ^ The same writer 
later said, regarding the overseas projects of 
financiers, ''To my mind militarism is in the 
modern world the conception of life which 
thinks such adventure legitimate, and organ- 
izes for this. The worst of the German ex- 
tremists wanted the Belgian coal fields and 
the French iron fields; ours happen to want 
the corn and cotton lands of Mesopotamia." ^ 
Those who would destroy war must come 
to know that industrialism has been organized 
around the same principles and in the same 
form as militarism. It has massed large 
armies of workers under the control of ab- 
solute commanders who brook no challenge 
to their imperious will and suppress dissent 
by force. It has been accompanied by all 
the consequences of war. It has produced 

1 Brailsford, "The War of Steel and Gold.'' 

2 Brailsford, The Herald, London, May 9, 1917. 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 59 

famine and pestilence. It has accomplished 
a vast destruction of life. Armies of cripples 
are flung off from its advance. It strengthens 
all the old causes of war, and constantly de- 
velops new occasions of conflict. It asserts 
the right of the strong to rule and makes the 
weak the prey, and the earth the booty, of 
the mighty. It develops economic imperial- 
ism in which the great nations compete for 
trade routes, undeveloped resources, the finan- 
cial exploitation of weaker peoples. Its policy 
of ''peaceful penetration'' by foreign invest- 
ment and commercial control is but another 
term for ruthless, aggressive ambition, is 
the brutal assertion of the will to power in 
the economic world, and is the constant 
provocation to strife. With its external ex- 
pansion constantly leading in the direction of 
war, industrialism is also ever impelled in 
the same direction as a diversion and a means 
of control for the inevitable social unrest 
developed within the nation by its policies.^ 
1 Veblen, "The Nature of Peace.'* 



6o OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

If there is to be a peaceful world, the spirit 
of war must be exorcised from economic life. 

It lies within the province of religion to 
make the people understand that Mars is 
to-day a two-faced deity. Seen from the 
front by admiring worshipers he is a glorious 
figure in shining armor, clean and youthful, 
straight and compelling, with noble counte- 
nance; but on the other side, inseparably 
joined to this fair youth, is the gross and 
ugly figure of aged Mammon, with his feet 
upon the neck of prostrate womanhood, 
gripping little children by the throat with his 
fat hands. To destroy Mars, Mammon also 
must be overthrown. Here indeed is a war- 
fare for religion. As Jesus said, "Ye cannot 
serve God and Mammon.'' As long as civili- 
zation is organized mainly to produce goods, 
it will continue in destructive strife. When 
it is organized to produce men and women, 
to develop the spiritual values of life, it 
will come to be a cooperation in mutual 
service. 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 6i 

Will religion accept the challenge of its 
mighty foe and lead humanity against the 
common enemy? There came a day when 
Jesus must needs turn aside from his preaching 
and teaching, and go to Jerusalem to join 
the final issue with the chief priests and 
Pharisees and with Pilate, knowing that the 
Cross was the end. There came a day when 
Paul must cease his missionary journeying, 
and go to Rome, ^^not knowing what shall 
befall me there,'' to join the issue with the 
imperial power of the Caesars. Has the 
day not come for modern religion at any cost 
to join the issue with the rulers of our civiliza- 
tion, to call the hosts of humanity to hurl 
Mars and Mammon from their throne, to 
rid the earth forever of the curse of mili- 
tarism and capitalistic industrialism? 

Mars and Mammon being inseparably 
joined, must be destroyed together. The 
beginning of disarmament is the death-wound 
of Mars. The beginning of economic co- 
operation is the death-blow of Mammon. A 



62 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

League of Nations with no agreement con- 
cerning their economic needs would leave 
untouched the roots of future conflicts. Or 
disarmament may mean the joining of the 
great powers together in a compact of 
benevolent economic imperialism to exploit 
together the weaker peoples and divide the 
booty, with some measure of justice between 
the spoilers, with none for the despoiled. 
For them there would be only a little kind- 
ness and that only as long as they were 
docile. 

The alternative to such a league of dis- 
honor is a world-wide extension of the co- 
operative principle. The Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America has declared 
for ^^ equal rights and complete justice for all 
men in all stations of life.'' This needs to be 
applied to the nations and races of the earth 
to the uttermost extent. The same body 
has also approved the report of its Social 
Service Commission declaring for '^the fullest 
possible cooperative control of both industry 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 63 

and the natural resources upon which in- 
dustry depends/' This principle needs also 
to be extended to the economic relations 
between nations. 

If religion would sweep away an ancient 
evil, it must replace it with a newer good. 
If arms and the glory of war are to be abol- 
ished, humanity must be brought together in 
a constructive fellowship of adventure and 
heroism. There must be developed ^^the 
moral equivalent of war/' The toil and 
suffering and fellowship of the battle must 
be replaced by the toil and suffering and 
fellowship of the struggle to meet the daily 
needs of the race. Here religion will find 
content for its duties and realization for its 
ideals. It will express itself in such prac- 
tical questions of statesmanship as the in- 
ternationalizing of trade routes and water- 
ways, the joint control of the distribution of 
raw materials. A religion which seeks the 
spiritual unity of the race must recognize 
that it is in the business of economic pro- 



64 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

duction and exchange that the greatest de- 
velopment of cooperative capacity has come 
to mankind. This has led to his cooperative 
intellectual and spiritual development. The 
expansion of economic cooperation will re- 
lease still greater capacities for mutual ad- 
vance. Those who seek to impose their way 
of life upon others by force destroy both 
themselves and others. Those who join to- 
gether to share their mutual capacities for 
the common good enlarge both their own 
and the common life. The principle of the 
cooperative national and international con- 
trol of industry has gone far enough and been 
successful enough in the present war to make 
practicable its further extension. 

It is through the development of economic 
cooperation that the world-family will solidify 
itself, and the world-order will develop. A 
league of peace which deals only with po- 
litical questions is but a paper pact. The 
workers of the world have gone beyond 
the intellectuals in that they propose to give 



OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 65 

the organized supra-nation some task at 
once to accomplish, and it is only by action 
that organisms develop. Moreover, in this 
they are in actual tune with the facts and 
needs of to-day, for the business of economic 
production has now proceeded far beyond the 
political organization of mankind. Politi- 
cally we are living in one century and 
economically we are living in another. The 
artificial boundaries of the states do not 
correspond to the facts of economic produc- 
tion and exchange, any more than they 
correspond to the ideal of fellowship and 
the capacity for its enjoyment. There are' 
to-day no independent economic units. These 
absolute sovereignties, called states, which 
exist in political philosophy and practice, do 
not exist when it comes to the interdependent, 
economic life of the world, which crosses all 
frontiers. Here is the actual beginning of 
that world-family life to which religion seeks 
to call the loyalty of the individual and of 
the nation. An organization to express the 



66 OPPORTUNITY FOR RELIGION 

fact of this growing world-unity will find 
that its authority rests not in any external 
power, but in its service value to humanity. 
Just as the nation contributes to the larger 
life of the individual, so will this w^orld-organ- 
ization contribute to the larger development 
of the nations and to the fullest happiness 
and expansion of mankind. Is the pull of 
self-interest sufficient to draw mankind to 
its accomplishment? Or does it need the 
passion of a great ideal to pull the world up 
to this new order of living, even as the pas- 
sion to preserve the Union was finally needed 
to accomplish the final overthrow of slavery.'^ 
Will its coming wait for the continuous 
proclamation by religion of the ideal of 
world-unity as the very expression of God, 
until there is massed for its accomplish- 
ment all the heart-hunger for the Infinite, 
all the passion for brotherhood, which are 
but different aspects of ''the incurably re- 
ligious nature'" of all mankind? 



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